By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
August 6, 2001
Steve M., a reader, e-mailed me with the question over the week-end: "Mary, have you taken a position on embryonic stem cell research? I would like to know your opinion."
Well, one thing I've decided in the past couple of weeks, after researching it, is that I agree with my son Guy, an orthopedic surgeon, who tells me that the media has created a very large problem where one really doesn't actually exist. Steve's question was very specific. He did not ask what I thought about stem cell research. He asked if I had taken a position on embryonic stem cell research.
There is a lot of stem cell research that has been going on in the past few years. For example, the most plentiful source of stem cells is from bone marrow. Britain's leading cancer information agency, Cancerbakup, says: "Stem cell and bone marrow transplantations are types of intensive treatment used to treat certain cancers, particularly leukemia and lymphomas, some other cancers and also some non-cancerous diseases of the bone marrow.
"Transplants are a way of allowing much higher doses of chemotherapy to be given, to improve the chances of completely curing the disease. Very high doses of chemotherapy, with or without radiotherapy, are given over a few days, and stem cells or bone marrow (either your own, or donated by someone else) are then given back to `rescue' you from the effects of the high dose treatment."
Do I have any problem with this kind of medical advance? Not in the least. Nor do I have any problem with the research that my son was involved with as an orthopedic surgery resident at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. By using Raul Mercia's own stem cells from his bone marrow, the doctors actually grew him a new thumb after he lost part of it in an accident. The use of Mercia's own cells virtually eliminated any risk of tissue rejection by the body.
I think that's amazing and it should be well funded and encouraged. Oddly, the media seems to have largely ignored these remarkable accomplishments and have concentrated almost entirely on research that, so far, has failed rather alarmingly. The March 8, 2001 New England Journal of Medicine reported the first double-blind study to determine whether fetal cell transplants can be effective in restoring dopamine function in Parkinson's Disease were "utterly devastating" according to one researcher. While at first at seemed there was some "modest" improvement, over time fifteen percent of the patients who had received the transplants experienced permanent uncontrollable movements: writhing, twisting, head-jerking, arm flailing, and constant chewing. One man was so badly affected he no longer can eat, requiring the insertion of a feeding tube.
That failure seems to merely have spurred on the debate about using stem cells obtained by killing the unborn. We have clear evidence that there is value in stem cells, especially those derived from bone marrow. We also know that deriving stem cells from placentas, after the birth of a baby, is also possible. The Anthrogenesis Corporation, a biotech company in Hanover, New Jersey, announced recently that it had developed technology for extracting large quantities of stem cells from placentas, "offering a rich new source of tissue that could be used to treat a variety of diseases."
Placentas, of course, have simply been part of a hospital's refuse problem - until now. It appears that a lot of folks out there are not interested in stem cell research really. What they are interested in is forcing the American people to support their, and the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court's, view that the unborn are not persons, as Roe v Wade concluded, then killing them and using their parts is not a big ethical problem and those who think it is are just blocking needed research.
In the embryonic stem cell debate in congress, those dedicated to the notion that the unborn are not persons would not even use the word "embryo." Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), an outspoken advocate of unlimited abortion, urged continued Federal funding for "human pluripotent stem cell research." "Human pluripotent stem cells used were "from early-stage embryos donated voluntarily by couples undergoing fertility treatment in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic or from non-living fetuses obtained from terminated first trimester pregnancies."
Once you accept the notion that some humans are not real people, using them for slaves or for research or for body parts for the superior life forms is an easy step. When the U.S. Supreme court in 1857 ruled in the Dred Scott case that Negroes were not "persons" as defined in the U.S. Constitution the American public became polarized - leading inevitably to the Civil War.
Now the issue is really our own potential offspring. The debate in Congress on stem cell research and its companion issue, human cloning, revolves around the very same issue that made abortion on demand and the killing of millions of unborn babies acceptable in America since 1973. If the unborn are not "persons" and its OK to experiment on animals, why isn't it just as OK to experiment on the unborn?
We've been through this for more than fifty years. In Nazi Germany, experimenting on those deemed less than real humans, the Jews, the Poles, the Gypsies, was accepted without protest by the German medical profession. Once the Germans adopted the notion that Jews, Poles, Serbs, Gypsies, and other undesirables were not "persons" both slavery and medical experiments on them could be conducted with no qualms.
Professor August Hirt, head of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Strasbourg, in a Christmas 1941 letter to Heinrich Himmler's adjutant, proposed improving the Institute's "collections of skulls." Pointing out that there were not very many Jews in the collections, although it had skulls of almost all races and peoples, he proposed:
"The war in the East now presents us with the opportunity to overcome this deficiency. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik commissar, who represent the prototype of the repulsive, but characteristic subhuman, we have the chance now to obtain scientific material."
Hirt did not want the skulls of "Jewish-Bolshevik commissars" already dead. He proposed that the heads of these persons first be measured while they were alive then:
"Following the subsequently induced death of the Jew, whose head should not be damaged, the physician will sever the head from the body and will forward it ...in a hermetically sealed tin can."
Himmler was delighted at this scientific research and approved the project. S.S. Captain Josef Kramer, a veteran exterminator from Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau and other Nazi extermination camps testified at his trial:
"Early in August 1943, I received eighty inmates who were to be killed with the gas Hirt had given me. ..I went into the gas chamber with about fifteen women this first time. I told the women they had to go into the chamber to be disinfected. I did not tell them, however, that they were to be gassed."With the help of a few S.S. men I stripped the women completely and shoved them into the gas chamber when they were stark naked. When the door closed they began to scream. I introduced a certain amount of the salt through a tub and observed through a peephole what happened inside the room. The women breathed for about half a minute before they fell to the floor. After I had turned on the ventilation I opened the door. I found the women lying lifeless on the floor and they were covered with excrements."
He continued the procedure until all 80 of the preserved heads Professor Hirt wanted were sent to him and Hirt "assembled the skeleton collection which was previously non-existent."
When the court interrogator asked what his feelings were at the time, Kramer replied:
"I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in a way I already told you. That, by the way, was the way I was trained."
Once convinced that the Jews and other "undesirables" were not persons, Kramer was able to commit unspeakable atrocities without any qualms and even defended his behavior.
We have reached that point when we can continue allowing atrocities like partial birth abortion, where an unborn infant is tortured and killed without even any anesthetic - a procedure that also has been stoutly defended by Rep. Maloney and others on the floor of the Congress. After all, that is the way they have been trained over the past 28 years.
I am a strong supporter of continuing stem cell research using adult and placenta stem cells. That research already has seen success. It needs to be expanded and financed.
However, using the unborn as if they were laboratory mice is, to me, unthinkable. Perhaps it's because I am old enough to remember how horrified we were back in 1944 when we discovered the genetic and other medical experiments that had been going on in Germany. Perhaps it's because I know, as a mother and grandmother, that unborn babies turn out to be real persons - every single time they are allowed to be born.
I've already seen a picture of my soon-to-be born 25th grandchild. He's not just a clump of cells. His name is Joseph. I'm quite sure that, if asked, his parents and the doctor would be glad to donate his placenta to research.
However, because they do not believe in human sacrifice, they will not donate Joseph to the researchers for their experiments.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com